>From some of the feedback I have seen and some I have even researched myself, one could draw the conclusion that it all comes down to the perception of the individual considering the service. Some feel that bandwidth is the major element (We provide unlimited BTW :), some feel that is not a consideration it is more the support and cost of the hardware, some have tons of hardware and feel it is the type of mail server software that is running the application which may involve expensive licensing, some feel the freebie email software is good enough because they offer pop-boxes like candy and do not offer the features of a more premium product, some feel it is just the comfort of knowing they have total control over their environment and the product they provide their client. This latter perception then becomes, I feel, more of an emotional comfort issue since most companies likely do not and probably would not invest the amount of capital, time, energy and man hours that is necessary to achieve an architecture that is capable of achieving an uptime of 99.99+%, which is near impossible from a single mail or even sometimes dual server structure. Everything needs maintenance eventually.
We try to solve this with our clustered fully redundant architecture with virtually no single point of failure, but from a hardware, connectivity, and licenesing standpoint this may not be feasable for all in our channel to build themselves. We are approaching email as we do domains, provide the best product in the market you can while still trying to remain as competitive as possible. We try to take a segment of the industry and simplify the process to the point where a company can choose to focus their attention, efforts and resources on getting the business from the market and focusing on customer serivce for client retention without worrying about anything breaking, or having to invest so heavily in a second and third level support infrastructure. Let's face it, email is right up there in terms of support effort for some. I do have to say that your comment about the need for access to log files wouldn't necessarily improve the performance of the product we offer, but it logically would place those resellers who do outsource on a more equal playing field with those who host, support, and invest heavily in their own infrastructure. This may not be the right feature to implement, but it is a step in the right direction. Customer service is one of the primary keys to being successful in any business, and access to log files or something similar would increase this aspect for those in our channel that currently are and those that will be using our service. Obviously the best choice is a system that never ever has a problem, and we all know that is a brass ring man will probably never reach, but you can consider a business with the ability to provide immediate response to a question / support issue and factor in almost zero cost of ownership for an infrastructure of the type of premium product we have devloped to be one step closer than most. We all love to hear the feedback and comments, and this may be technically and cost effectively tough to implement (I can see our developers rolling their eyes as we speak ;), but keep the ideas coming because we are listening. Peter Ejtel Sales Manager Tucows Inc. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Discuss List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 7:25 PM Subject: RE: Tucows E-mail Service > > > Would offering real-time access to server logs, or mirrored server logs > > through a web interface or downloadable file make you feel more confident in > > outsourcing to us? Anyone else agree? Are there any examples in the market > > you can compare this to? > > That sounds like a nightmare to implement. You would need to make sure a > specific reseller could see only their customers log entries. > > > Do you have other requests you would require included with the service or > > offered as an additional upgrade that you would need in order to seriously > > consider outsourcing? > > Complete control over the service and near zero cost. Seriously, that is > what we have now and it would be very difficult for us to throw everything > away and hand control over to someone else. > > Someone who does not currently offer e-mail services and does not have the > technical aptitude to offer e-mail services on their own would probably > never consider these things as being requirements. We do. >
